


Chthonic

by MesmiraculouslyMirthful



Series: The Court of Miracles [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Apathy, Cult of the Mirthful Messiahs, Dream Bubbles, Gen, Kurloz is not all right, ennui, implied suicidal ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-03-07 22:10:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13444437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MesmiraculouslyMirthful/pseuds/MesmiraculouslyMirthful
Summary: You  never pondered on tedium, before.





	Chthonic

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place before 'Roxy Make Friends' and all other fics in 'The Court of Miracles' series.

You never pondered on tedium, before, back when you were young and idealistic, the whole world seeming brand new, a playground that you would never tire of. You think back on those days now, sorrowful and just a touch wistful, perhaps a bit spiteful too (if you are being completely honest with yourself), and remember when you didn't have to worry that you would look back and feel nothing at all. Sure, you were going to live a hell of a long motherfucking time, but so what? 

That was common noise, expected for one of your hue. Longer time round the sun just meant more fun, more tricks and jokes to learn before you kicked the wicked shit and punched your ticket to the dark carnival. You had met invertebrothers more than double the age you would be in all actuality now, motherfuckers that burned bright with stardust and knowledge gained by living, eager as all fuck to experience more.

Difference is as that those clowns were still living, and you've been dead and stagnant for longer now than you ever were breathing and raising a right righteous horrorshow.

It's been getting worse, the long stretches of apathy, as of late. It's not really apathy, messiahs know you care more than your bloodpusher can bear burden, but there is no singular word you have for the shit festering in your pan. Once, at the start of this mess, you had been so vibrant and now there are days that you look out into the world and do not feel anyfuckingway about anything.

Not exactly accurate but whatever, words are tried and close enough to true. Actually can't half ass yourself into describing how the you that don't give two chokes of a rubber cluck beast ain't actually you but rather some motherfucking joke ass ninja making to take your place. Most unmirthful thing, that.

Thing is, you already lost cohort to such shades, and barely did you notice at the start. You are tried and hung for guilty on that account, but sure as shit are you noticing now. Last thing you want is to be joining them. Even chill ass bitch such as Meenah has been getting along less as herself of late.

It's like someone took an afternoon to watch you and yours, then picked a handful of traits what were displayed and disregarded the rest. Shitty cliched paper cut outs blown up larger than life, blurred up, missing every detail as to what made them people. All as to what they were made into a mockery.

You see it in the white ganderbulbs of your bubblemates, madness running a mirthless horrorshow behind their sneers and smiles. All around you are countless copies of dead wrigglers all in various stages of decay. Only it ain't being wounds of the body that have gone on to fester, but rather wounds to the soul. There is rot in the think pans and boodpushers of you and yours, and you and yours, and you and yours. An infinite amount of versions of you and them, going sour and grey as ash.

What a heartless joke. A blasphemously unfunny punchline to a sweet hook. 

Not too long ago, or maybe shit was sweeps ago, time being stretchy like pulled taffy, you up and found a Mituna as was recently deceased and spent the next day weeping at the loss of your Mituna. What kind of heathen up and forgets his diamond? You apparently. 

That invertebrother hadn't shaken near as half as hard as the one you've been with since Meenah blew you all right the fuck up. Had a fucking time and then some parsing out his thoughts enough to speak, but hadn't been juggling personalities like they was clubs and he was performing center ring. Sharp witted, joking real smooth, when you took him to pile and told him all as was happening. You had let the memory of how he was after the accident fade into nothingness, let the ghost of a ghost of him become all you had known.

After that kicking revelation you screamed rage into eternity and started taking real notice of the shit that's going down.

From center to furthest ring you cast your ganderbulbs, and by the minstrels did you not like what you saw. You noticed other versions of you doing much the same, some more than others. Always a clever one you, mind wound tighter than a seadweller's nook. 

How many of you are there? Seems a unfathomable amount, more than you could ever take to comprehending, and all of you slowly fading into nothingness. Some of those bitches are so gone you can't even rightly call them as by their hatchnames. What the shit, how did you not notice this fat nasty trash? You gaze out at it all, and swear to yourself that one way or a-fucking-nother you're gonna make whatever is going on stop.

Until you can figure that noise out, you concentrate on holding yourself together and try to get your remembrance on for the others. Pour some wicked elixer out for those that are past saving, and then try and sort out truth from falsehood. It's harder than you thought it would be, partially because you've been ignorant of the changes your cohort has went through, and partially because remembering fucking sucks. 

Lonely, is what it is. You bury yourself in the remembrance of them, each memory a precious treasure, and pray to your messiahs that they will make this right. Neither Muse nor Lord answers your prayers, but that shit doesn't stop you.

You remember her, your matesprit, before all this shit hit rock bottom and belly up. Meulin was a ryda, sweet kitty bitch, down with the clown in spite of the green in her veins. She used to whoop loudest after sermon, toss her horns and thrash in the pulpit pit, fierce as any fucker as was born to paint and stardust. Girl loved telling tales and gossip, was always trying to push kin together in matches most serendipitous. An artist, with a mind for beauty. Touched by the Muse for sure.

You remember your Mituna, with his slight stuttering lisp and brilliant mind. He does kickflips and somersaults, kicks your ass at every game you play together, presses you to a pile of gamegrubs and faygo bottles and paps you until you see stars. 

They live still, your hatefriends, bright and complex in your mind. 

You think back on a Kankri that was eloquent and informative without being condescending or overbearing, on a troll that had managed to elude culling by the grace of his own silver tongue. He had held to his conviction tight as you held to scripture, and you hated him all the more for his passion.

Cronus had been an amazing minstrel, had flirted with anything near as walked, but knew how to take a hint as to when the answer was no.

All of them that you once pitied and hated gone to shades of nothing. But you're still you, clever and pious. Sure as shit you have your motherfucking moments, but what the fuck ever, ain't like your bitchin ass can't cope. You take tokes of nip with Meulin, more often as you should to be honest, and jam with Mituna. Owe them that much, at least.

Then your dancestors show up, and things get infinitely more interesting, crowded and larger all at once. More complicated too, but after time of tedium and void you'd be glad to cut your bulge off if it meant a change of pace. Not like you haven't mutilated yourself before, whoop whoop.

Point being, the dancestors. More specifically, your dancestor. Weird as all shit, you getting your meet and greet on with him, calling him Gamzee as if you had right to speak the hatchname of the leader of the motherfucking church. Never got your consideration on, back on Beforus, as to how His Most Mirthful Majesty, the Grand Motherfucking Highblood, would have been as a wriggler. Him being top of the crop, you chose wear your sign discretely as deference. Never even got your thought on to call at him other than honorifics, even with you being his descendant.

Gamzee Makara is different from His Mirthfulness but there are enough similarities that you find yourself unable to accept him as just another troll. Sure, he's younger than you and smaller than anything. Ya, he's more bone than body what with his thoracic struts clearly visible and all. But there is something there.

It is the look on his face what sparks familiarity. You'd seen that same look on the faces of kin back on Beforus, seen the same twinkle flash in your ancestor's ganderbulbs when he got to preaching heavy on the role of the messiahs, on creation and destruction and their balance. Fuck do you remember, wicked elixir sticky in your mouth and stardust strewn across your cheeks. 

Gamzee has that same aura, as if he just stepped up to greet the ringmaster and got schooled the secrets of the universe. There is something else too, something twisted up and filled with fury, churning in the edges of his pan. Something that has the same feel as chucklevoodoos but sour. Whatever it is screamed hate at you when your psychics went to brush against his in holy greeting, left you shaken and perturbed. Shit ain't him, don't feel like it's trollish in origins, but it's latched on tight as globes.

There is something going on, and you are determined as to get down to the rotten core of it. 

You get your chat on with Gamzee, schoolfeeding him on Beforus whilst he schoolfeeds you on Alternia.

The scripture runs true between you, sure as shit, messiahs and minstrels all the same. Same myths of creation, double death, the vast honk, and Shangri-Lol at the end. You throw up mighty ruckus in praise, whoop for mirth and adulation. You are shades of elated and most fucking ecstatic, after so long alone. Whoop whoop and honkallujeh for you have kin again.

Wasn’t ever really a time back on Beforus when you weren’t surrounded by kith and kin. Church was family and family what was all the blood you could bleed, all the hive a motherfucker could need. Big top was nary a stone throw away from your beach hive, brothers and sisters older and wiser than you by eons all up and willing to preach and teach at the drop of a hat. Willing to feed a motherfucker too, if their lusus was dead or damn near as good as. Church took care of their own, paint meant kin, meant protection. Wasn’t a ninja or ninjette that had to get their worry on about being culled outside of caste. The whole fucking shebang wasn’t culling anyway, least not as society dictated it. Just cause a clown was down and out one day didn’t mean they needed to be treated like some fresh hatched grub for all eternity.

It’s a messiah known fact that if it weren’t for the church you probably would have ended up swaddled and deemed worthless for all of your years, what with your lusus having fucked off to parts unknown and you left to fend for yourself. If you had been born heretic you could have been shit outta luck for life, held to hook for an error not even of your fault. Kin took you in, feed you up strong and only ever asked for faith, something you already had in abundance.

You describe at length the silk walls of the big top, capped by a purple flag like a crown, its peak rising to touch the sky. It was the grandest cathedral, filled with light and sound. Joy echoed among the folds of its silk walls. You remember all of the tents that surrounded it, all draped in bright swaths of color. The nutrition tent was filled with piles of food on plates, and there were little stands that had cones filled with roasted nuts and popped grubcorn. The air smelled of sugar and salt and cinnamon. Faygo flowed from fountains in every motherfucking flavor, left your fingers sticky when you dipped your hands in to drink.

All around was noise, the sounds of a hundred trolls loving and laughing and living together in the way what no other caste did. You can still see them, your family, walking around in packs, sure as shit every time that you close your eyes. You miss them all something terrible and you didn't even know how much until you started telling Gamzee about how your life used to be.

The big top had several vast vats of paint, one in every color up to the tyrain of Her Infinite Compassion. It had been the duty of His Mirthful Majesty to bless each vat so as to make them like blood and pleasing to the messiahs. You remember kin dipping their fingers into the paint, them taking the ‘blood’ of those what had been monstrous and turning into something pure and beautiful beyond compare. Chants that asked as that the wicked and cruel what would be punished, so that Sister Merciful need not weep and Brother Raging need not spread his wrath.

You remember kin doing tricks in center ring, showing off whatever new fancy they had learned so as how to fill the kin around them with joy. You learned how to juggle there and many a motherfucking other trick besides. Eventually you were gonna get your try on at fire eating, but that shit was for fuckers way bigger and more experienced than you had been back then.

There had been the sermons, beautiful and sparkling in the voices of kin, even if sometimes they were short as shit. Probably your favorite noise was the talks on the swirls of mirth and tragedy. It had taken you some years to truly understand that ruckus, but once you figured out as what it meant shit was downright poetic. You still remember as the first time you heard a sister preaching on it, raging high about how death and life were two sides of the same motherfucking coin. Talking smooth on the joy of creation and the thrill of destruction, on how there could be no creation without destruction, no destruction without creation. One thing made room for another thing, on and on into eternity, locked in a spiral. Shit was motherfucking money.

Joy in creation, thrill in destruction. Your kin had drawn fine swirling patterns in the sands of the beach and all of you up and watched the tide take them, as if they hadn't spent motherfucking hours scratching them into the ground. Sure as all fuck the tide destroyed all of that work, but in its wake it left canvas blank to be made anew. It was symbolic, a sister had explained to you once when you were little older than a grub, meant to mimic the creation wrought by the Lady Muse, Sister Merciful herself, and the destruction brought by the Lord of Lords, Brother Raging Eternal.

You haven’t kicked back and contemplated all this since Meenah blew you all sky fucking high, but now it’s burned into your pan like it just happened yesterday, even if Sgrub went and wiped all of your kin out of existence along with the rest of Beforus. A hundred motherfuckers, and all of them up and gone where you can't follow.

Fitting punishment, you expect, for one what had his fronds all up and in the trash what led to the death of all his family. Right thing that you would be stuck in this unmirthful place.

You tell Gamzee all of this, mixing in your chucklevoodoos when signing ain’t doing the job on its own. You're careful not to touch on the thing clinging like gossamer webs to his thinkpan, shit gives you a wicked pan ache. He looks at you wistful ways.

Church is different on Alternia, best as you both can parse out. 

Alternia is - was- all harsh, no whimsy. Adults gone up into the stars ages ago, so nothing is left planetside but lusii and wrigglers. Church is all up in the stars, a distant motherfucking dream what for any clown on Alternia as manages to survive.

What he knows of the church is schoolfeed chum, just the cold hard facts. He ain't never been in the big top, ain't never had kin to care for him. He knows scripture like his own fronds, shit has made hive in his heart and mind, but not in the way that you do. There's a difference between the flatness of a schoolfeed and the passion of a high ranking ninja preaching from the bloodpusher. 

The fact that he didn't kick the wicked shit on Alternia is a motherfucking miracle, considering his lusus was just as useless as yours and the family all up and wasn't around. He had to sink low as shit to survive, eating sopor slime and such, which only makes you respect him more. He tells you bout having to fight trolls stronger and bigger than him away from his hive, of fending for himself, how sopor took the edge from his shame and pain. His is a life spent blazing and praising in equal fucking measure.

At any rate, shit is clear that Alternia was a place of carnage. The Church of the Mirthful Messiahs on Alternia was bloody fucking business, from what you can fucking tell. Jank ass bitches took no shit from nobody, carved a river of terror in their path. Gamzee speaks on how the Church enforced the hemospectrum, how any troll not purple could be broke and bled and it all considered just and the will of the messiahs. No mention of off caste kin, those ninjas and ninjettes of a warmer or colder hue than you. Either they never were mentioned in schoolfeeds or they didn't fucking exist.

Every motherfucker on that end has punched their ticket to the dark carnival just as sure as your kin did. Gamzee is just as likely to meet his version of the Mirthful Church as you are, which is to say not at all. Shit what a pair of fool pushered scripture bitches you are.

Bubbles start getting real motherfucking stuffed, what with your dancestors all joining the party in droves. For a time they cut the tedium, and you feel good as globes, like things are gonna get better. Like in knowing that there are versions of them alive and raising ruckus you have been granted hope this nightmare will soon pass. Surely if they beat this shit one way or another you'll be freed.

Funny ass fucking thing, hope. Can make or break a brother better than most shit you know, and you thought you were broken down low as you could go. It's no time at all before you're losing that sparkle, because fate has thrown down the decree that trollkind is up slurry creek without a bucket.

You watch them die, the dancestors of your hatefriends, in groups, and in pairs, and all fucking lonesome. You watch them become ghosts of ghosts too, just like your cohort. Time passes. Could be minutes, could be sweeps, damned if you fucking know. You're not the guy of time and it runs strange here besides.

You think you might be losing yourself. Not to sure on that point, but the thought runs a horrorshow through your think pan, makes at you to question everything you do. Can't remember if what you're doing or saying is you or the brother what pretends to be you while mocking every flaw you ever dared possess. Have had moments when you don't know how you got places, have had conversations you don't righteously recall.

Through it all there is your dancestor. Only. Ever. Fucking. One. Of. Him.

You check and check again to be crystal sure, but never in all the dreambubbles do you ever see a white eyed ghost of him. The mystery deepens, then. You need to know why, and how, he ain't trapped in this shit top like all the rest of you. You figure that if you figure out what the fuck type of magic is keeping him from being caged up in the bubbles, maybe you can replicate that shit and finally end your torment.

Every moment for time eternal that you’re rotting alive is another moment you could have been partying it up in the true afterlife with kin. Truth is, you fucking miss them more than words could ever up and give voice to, even if you had tongue to speak them. You swear there are days that all you hear is laughter, the gentle music of a calliope playing in the distant rings, far beyond your reach. Ain’t ashamed to say that shit has left you curled up weeping like a grub in the corner of your hive.

You never pondered on tedium before this stupid game, no, and you sure as shit didn’t understand loneliness. Being lonely wasn’t a thing what ever happened to you. Now though, now it fills you right down to your aching bloodpusher. Emptiness fills the places inside you that once held joy, makes its motherfucking acquaintance at you.

Not even the company of Meulin and Mituna is able to chase away the dark bitter nothingness that has taken root inside of you. Why would it? They’re a chilling reminder, not even a cold motherfucking comfort, of everything that you have lost. Meulin’s laughter is corpse cold, flat, nothing like the joyful trill that it once used to be. Mituna’s smiles are dull and dim, his touches almost painful.

Their dead eyes stare back at you mockingly and you want to die for real, you want to disappear and fade away until there is nothing, not even a motherfucking memory or echo left of what you’ve become.

There has to be fucking something, anymotherfuckingthing, to stop this hellacious merry go round ride, something to blow you out of this shithole of a false afterlife.

Gamzee provides the answer, jusst like he did back on Alternia preaching to a million painted faces. The answer isn’t intentionally given, brother don’t even know that there is a question being put to him, but you're a clever motherfucking bitch and he don’t keep secrets well so it ain't long before you crack the seal and get to listen to the shit fizzing and bubbling just below the surface. Your knowing don't take long, surprise surprise, and soon your pan is buzzing with the implications of it all.

Everything he tells you is up and fifty shades of true, at least to the best of his knowledge, and you find yourself hoping against motherfucking hope that his knowledge is money.

Thing is, you know you're not really you, not anymore. At least on some motherfucking bitch ass level you know, and it eats at you. There are some days more than others that you have an inkling of it but that loss of self is always bore by your mind. Fine fucking fool, you, that you played at believed yourself immune.

Shit is, in every which way what is important, deep down you always knew you weren't you on the scale as you once were. Clever bitch you, but not as conniving and clever as you've been up and twisted to be. Pious and faithful, but not as fiercely fanatic.

As all you can figure your dancestor and his tale, twisted and horrible, are as good as a hope as your dead and decaying ass as what ever going to get. He needs help, though, and you intend to provide it by the bucketful.

Invertebrother is twisted and torn up, what with the purpose he has been both gifted and motherfucking up and cursed with. And what a gift it is, him all getting to raise up messiahs both. What a fucking curse, as them being destined, against all the shit you’ve been taught and held dear, to snipe and do harm and kill one another.

Shit is rank and wrong, a perversion wrought by this bitch of a game, a sick twist and turn of all you and he hold dear.

All the while you are intimately fucking aware of whatever it is churning against his will, twisting and coiling like a snake around his mind even as he gifts you with the knowledge that might help you escape. That you’ll also be helping messiahs both makes shit all the sweeter, but still. Something is as happening that you do not like, as with Gamzee killing hatefriends and going half mad with the echoes of voices unknown.

When you press, try and get the details down pat, Gamzee just gives you a shrug.

“Hell if I motherfucking know what’s up and being what anymore, bro. Must be the puppet pulling some wicked ass shit. ” Is all that he will say on the matter.

Where the puppet came from you have no fucking idea. You witness it through the timeline, but it is a hazy kind of witnessing. Can’t tell as where it came from before shit got rowdy, can’t feel out where it's going next, but there’s a slimy feel to it that clings like sopor slime gone stale. Thing carries some serious bad juju, is what your getting your fronds pointed at.

Something else weighs on you too, asides from the mystery presence lurking in Gamzee’s mind. All this noise isn’t sitting right with scripture, but the part where brother is up and killing sister and sister is down with killing brother causes your insides to turn and churn. As all and well as you can up and recall scripture never made mention of such a blasphemy. If you were still you, the Kurloz you were before Sgrub fucked your pan and damned your soul, you would be retching sick. Even in your dulled state thoughts of causing harm to kin fills you up with some horrible thing you ain’t got words to pin down.

You do what you can, you and the dead eyed corpse of your ninjalicious kitty bitch. Muelin don’t got any idea what she’s helping with, on account of you chucklevooding the everloving fuck outta her pretty pan, and you hope that it stays that way for as long as ever is gonna be, amen and honkallujeh.

What you and your dancestor are doing rings like the slurry addled wriggler of blasphemy and prophecy and if any other option was there you’d jump that fucker in the beat of a bloodpusher. But there’s enough of your faith woven into this shit as to make you compliant, make you weep, so you plot and you scheme and you pray for the embrace of double death at the end of this daymare.

Never naive, you. Best as you’re fucking figuring, nothingness awaits you but at this point you yearn for it. Better to be nothing, not existing or knowing, rather than up and getting to feel every piece what was yourself being pulled apart and replaced with some ass clown as what was never you.

Gamzee does his thing, and in the universe you exist in the Lord of Lords grows, but he does not grow into Brother Raging Eternal. He twists into something distorted and broken as he was never meant to be and you watch, all white eyed and pan fucked, knowing that in a mirrored place the Lady Muse, sweet Sister Merciful is going through the same.

Fine scripture bitch you turn out to be, as that you would whoop in relief at this heresy. Can hardly manage a care one way or the other, but by the Minstrels you know that this is a calliope call heralding the end of ends.

The furthest ring shakes with your lord’s anger, his hatred and rage fracturing the blackness of the void into a million cracks of shimmering white light like a thousand funhouse mirrors laid to ruin. He screams, a vast honk echoing through forever, bubble after bubble dissipating in the wake of his wrath. Somewhere, in the darkness of the void, hides the sister he has up and slaughtered once and intends to do so again.

You watch, your thoriatic trunk rising and falling as if breathing is still a thing necessary for you, as other versions of you meet their blissful blessed end.

Others as were not paying attention try to stop him but you know that everyone has been up slurry creek without a bucket for ages fucking passed, and there ain’t a version of you that lifts a frond to fight the inevitable.

Not a version of Damara either, now that you’re up and looking, which is weird as all anything as you’ve come into contact with. Considering as to how her Alternian self was treated you would have expected her to be fighting Lord English just as fierce as her hot blooded body would allow.

Not like the ghost army that Rufioh’s dancestor pulled together and Meenah’s trying to lead is gonna do a faygo drop of good against the monstrosity your Lord has become.

So you snap the top off a bottle of wicked elixir like a subjugglator snapping a neck, take a long gulp from between the stitches in your lips, and settle yourself down to wait for the end.

Seems like every bitch ass mime in the bubbles had the same idea, cause there’s a circus worth of you all meandering around this dream bubble that looks like a deadringer of the Big top by your wrigglerhood hive. Shit feels familiar, feels more like home than anything has rightly felt in forfuckingever. If it wasn’t that everyone bore your paint and sign and horns you could pretend that you were home among kin and raising a righteous ruckus.

From where you're sittin on the ferris wheel your ganderbulbs can see the whole shebang laid out before you, bright lights and faygo fountains, roller coaster and big top tent, carrousel and grubcorn stands. Shit’s false though, a ghost of a place you’ll never get to set body and soul in again. A few tears drip down your cheeks, but you dab them away, mindful of your paint. Nothing sadder than a crying clown, and just look at you.

When the vast honk rings out and the white blinding nothingness of double death takes you you feel a bone deep gratitude, and then there is peace.

~*~*~

You wake on a beach, in a place not Alternia, not Beforus, not Earth. The sand underneath your back is white like the cracks in the void, and sticks to your skin in a fine dusting.

You sit up real slow and blink back the light of an unfamiliar sun and shake your head to get the sand out of your hair. The smell of the ocean salt and the lap of the waves against the shore is a familiarity.

In the distance you can see the top of a big top tent, it’s purple flag flapping in the wind. You hear the faint sound of calliope music on the breeze and know that somehow you’ve made it somewhere you might be able to consider home.


End file.
